Technology is supposed to be your friend. But the last few days have proved repeatedly that computers are definitely not Mickey’s friends. They don’t seem to like him even a little bit.
The problem seems to stem from making the mistake of taking my beloved old laptop to Iowa. My daughter was the only family member who could go along on the vacation to see Grampa and Gramma. And her laptop now consists of a broken laptop body with no keyboard linked to a wifi-linkable keyboard and wifi-linkable used-television monitor. That computer was not exactly in a portable condition. I suggested she could replace the sticky-used-chewing-gum connections when she got to Iowa, but she wouldn’t risk it.
So the decision was made to take both my old laptop with the barely living battery and my backup cheap Walmart laptop for her to use. We made it to Iowa with my beloved old laptop still able to boot up on the barely living battery. I had tried to replace the battery by purchasing a new one directly from HP online. But it was delayed enough that we couldn’t get it before leaving. Still, the car trip didn’t completely kill the dying battery I had. So I used it to save and edit pictures from the Wright County Fair and write my daily posts while visiting in Iowa. A successful trip by internet-addicted idiots according to the uninformed standards I was apparently judging it by.
But on returning home to Texas, disaster struck totally by laptop.
First of all, the dying battery expired as soon as I tried to fire up Old Beloved on our return home. And then I learned that the battery I had bought to revive it was an out-of-stock discontinued item at the HP factory. My order had been canceled. They gave me a line on a company that provided discontinued parts, but I did not have the money to swing that at the end of the month. So that went on hold.
My backup laptop had now become my new Old Beloved. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember any of my old passwords for practically everything on the internet. So, I spent a week recovering online accounts on my new Old Beloved. That was hectic and un-swell. But I reached a point where most of my August bills were paid or scheduled to be paid, and I was settling into my old routine again when I discovered the terrible mistake I had made. My daughter had keyed everything on the new Old Beloved to her Google account. I had been saving all my new passwords to her account rather than my own. Oh, beehoofadoo! Whoever would’ve thought that such world-rattling consequences could befall me because of such an innocent mistake? There was a point at which I had no way back into my email account because it was no longer tied to my cell phone or current computer, and there were no means for recovering it, not even by using voodoo. Then I happened to remember an account I had set up solely to get back into Pinterest in 2016. I was able to log back into that and use it to get recovery codes for everything that either I or my daughter had destroyed or deleted because of the Google mix-up.
Last night my beloved daughter wanted the old password for our Hulu account to put it on her Frankencomputer, and after all I have been through in my own personal cyberwar, I nearly lost it. Fear not. My daughter still lives with her eardrums intact. And no damage remains from the top of my head blowing off that couldn’t be fixed with duck tape and super glue.
The worst experience I got from this summer’s food delivery came at the hands of a fellow school teacher. I had to deliver faculty lunch to an elementary school in the last week of summer school classes. It was a large lunch with two bags of burgers and a tray loaded with drinks in flimsy cardboard cups. It was a short drive from the restaurant to the school. But when I got there, it was a school with many entrances and kids playing on two different sides of the building. I went to the door I thought the Uber navigator was directing me to. I knocked. When I got no answer, I called the lady who ordered everything. I told her I was at the west door. She told me that I had to find the main door on the south side of the building. So I managed to juggle the two sacks and the easily spillable drinks to three different doors on the south side, all locked. I called again and was told I must have the wrong building, so I went to the school building across the street and found an office building with only kindergarten and daycare kids present. I called again.
And back-seat drivers all have visions of the bloody, fiery car crash you are going to put them through in return for their $5.00 riding fee.
Catch a Falling Star 
The 13th Sense
I know that you are probably thinking, “What the heck are you thinking, Mickey? There are really only five senses!”
And I am probably thinking, (ignoring the fact that I should know for certain what thinking is present at least in my own stupid head), “Oh, I think you are probably wrong about that,” considering carefully that I should only think this and not say it out loud, because people get mad when you suggest that you are smarter than they are.”
Besides the five senses we all claim of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, there is also that one people often refer to as “the sixth sense”, and by that phrase they don’t necessarily mean that you “see dead people who don’t know they are dead”. Instead, that sense is kinda like a sense of intuition. A feeling that you simply know what is about to occur, or you know something about something that you could only really know if you have ESP… Or if you are Spiderman, it is your “Spider Sense”… wiggly lines radiating from your comic-book head.
And what about the sense of hot and cold? Or the sense that you can’t breathe the air in the same room with your cigar-smoking Republican uncle? You know, the one with all the toxic opinions you are forced to listen to too often? And there’s a sense of contentment. Or the sense of happiness. A sense of dread. There are all kinds of senses that your magnificent stupid-old brain constantly responds to that you really haven’t been counting.
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Of course, I am not writing about any of those today. I am writing about that old “Sense Number Thirteen”, the sense of certainty that every pessimist lives by, the sense that your natural daily bad luck won’t kill you today, but only because it would all be over and prevent more suffering tomorrow if it did.
Yes, it is Sense Number Thirteen that makes you prepare yourself for the worst, because you simply have the sense that it is destined to happen. I dread going to the mailbox. I know I will hate what I find there. This week I found a letter from the IRS, who has already accepted my 2017 return and the first installment of my tax payment, suggesting that they may reopen my case in order to determine if I owe them more money. And I got the hospital bill that I have been dreading because I cannot afford to pay it.
I dread walking the dog also because there are two pickup trucks, one black and one silver, that routinely roar through the 30-mile-an-hour neighborhood doing sixty or seventy. One of them is going to run over my dog while she has me on the leash, or maybe even run over one of neighbor Frank’s grandchildren. Anyway, we are preparing by organizing a neighborhood petition and complaining to the police. The Thirteenth Sense really screws with my life. But it forces me to prepare.
The hospital payment department told me that they are going to send paperwork that will help me pay the debt by forgiving part of it since I am already bankrupt over medical bills. I was taken pleasantly by surprise by that. I have so far successfully avoided thinking about the IRS. Those jack-booted shock troops apparently aren’t going to show up at my door until next week. And the police cruiser has been on our street twice already since I last talked to Frank, and they put out one of those speed limit signs that shows you in bright red lights how much over the speed limit you are going.
So, there’s the saving grace. A pessimist gets to be happier in the long run than the optimist. By preparing for the worst, the pessimist is ready for the bad thing to happen, and either deals with it as it comes, or is pleasantly surprised at an outcome devoid of extra suffering. A pessimist is never taken by surprise for the worse. I’m glad I have a 13th Sense. It helps me be a HAPPY stupid old pessimist.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, pessimism